I weary of the festering sores of testosterone-induced violence throughout the globe. Festering sores in Gaza, Iraq, Syria, the Ukraine, the Sudan, Nigeria, undoubtedly countless other locations.
Men are so tiresome with their inexhaustable need for admiration, adoration, status, power, recognition, dominance, etc. blah blah, the boring Alpha Male:
An Alpha Male doesn’t care about what other people think and doesn’t need other’s approval. What he wants comes first. But don’t take this the wrong way though: you shouldn’t be a jerk and dismiss your friends opinions, wants and needs. An Alpha Male takes care of the close people around him. He leads them in the right direction but at the same time listens to them to find out where they’re at and what moves them.
The stuff of tribalism -- and -- endless conflict. Witness the numerous festering sores of testosterone-induced violence throughout the globe.
One is suddenly beguiled by whale poop, the possibly global-saving properties of humble whale poop:
Whales and the waste they release at the ocean's surface -- their fecal plumes and urine streams -- play a much bigger role in the stability of the oceans that has been understood to date, according to the scientists who published this study last week in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
That's because those waste products are chock-full of iron and nitrogen, two of the most important nutrients for both plankton and krill, the tiny shrimp-like crustacean that makes up most of the diet for the whales known as the "great whales," including sperm and balleen whales.
By helping the plankton and krill populations grow, whales play a huge and beneficial role in maintaining ocean ecosystems, on commercial fishing and even on climate change. The discovery is especially timely now, as whale populations have begun to recover after they were heavily exploited in the early 20th century.
What a contrast! Alpha Males destroying the world with their selfishness, whales saving the world by simply pooping.
In an ironic note, now deceased Alpha Male, Aristotle Onassis, who added Jackie Bouvier Kennedy to his conquests, had a psychological envy of the sexual prowess of whales as evidenced by his decorating schema:
The yacht's circular bar has its own homey little touches too. The covering for the bar stools is made of whale's testicles, and the footrests on the stools are polished whale teeth.
Ari loved his little Alpha Male joke:
The barstools allowed Onassis to indulge regularly in one of his poor jokes. “Madame,” he would say to female guests. “You are sitting on the largest penis in the world.” Ari was not subtle. The man who began work as a £12-a-week telephone operator in Buenos Aires and became a friend of prime ministers felt no need to be.
But, consider the dear not little whale. No need to make vulgar jokes, the whale scoops up vital nutrients at the bottom of the oceans and recycles these nutrients at the surface:
Bringing all those nutrients back up to the surface creates blooms of phytoplankton, the tiny single-celled organisms that make up the base of the food chain for all of the world's marine life. When those blooms occur, larger animals like krill feed on the plankton, and are in turn eaten by even larger animals, creating a kind of giant ocean buffet.
When they're at the surface, all those plankton soak up carbon dioxide. And when they die, they take that CO2 with them to the bottom of the ocean, effectively sequestering it out of the atmosphere.
Whales themselves do the same thing when they die...
And, for a pictorial explanation of the Smetacek Whale Poop Hypothesis, see
The Power Of Poop: A Whale Story.